Considering GOG is a sister company for CDP I thought this is probably the best avenue to leave some constructive feedback that might hopefully be passed onto the devs in some capacity, whether it be some aggregate feedback caculated by them later on, or whether some of them actually peruse this forum (its possible!). At the very least, we can discuss what we'd like to see fixed in Witcher 3. :)

To start, I really enjoyed the game. I finished a playthrough on Roche's path and intend to go through Iorveth's when I get the chance. However, I did notice some glaring design flaws that need addressing.

Mutagens

These kind of baffled me and seemed to be a heavily underused feature. Throughout the entire game you only get a handful of slots that you can't even overwrite, but you still continuously find better mutagens everywhere. You would think that you would be able to slowly upgrade them or switch them out, but they're permanent. There's little variety, and their effects are not meaningful.

Reverse Learning Curve

At the start of the game combat is very challenging, but towards the end its a cakewalk (atleast with my Quen/Passive Swordsman build). I would've prefered if the difficulty steadily increased. Maybe this just means I should play on a more difficult setting, but the problem is the game was difficult at the start and got too easy when my abilities let me overpower enemies too easily and with little skill involved aside from refreshing Quen without being interupted. Ideally enemies should become more varied and intelligent to increase the challenge as Geralt improves, but this didn't happen.

What delayed consequences?

I LOVED the delayed consequences system in the first game; it blew my mind that consequences were so far delayed that I couldn't reload an earlier save if I didn't like the outcome, because it was too far back. Witcher 2, however, felt more like Mass Effect (which I also love), where I find myself continually replaying a scene because I know immediately what the outcomes are and how to fix them to my liking.

Additionally the problem wasn't just consequences weren't delayed, its that in most of the cases you never even learn the consequences! In the first game after each chapter you got a neat summary telling you what you did, and why it lead to an outcome, or atleast some of the outcome. In this game that doesn't really happen - you might learn the consequences, but its vague and it doesn't show you the chain of events you set in motion. I was similarly disappointed that I didn't see any of my major choices in the game ever come into long term fruitition - it was always short-term, and the cause-effect relationship wasn't entirely apparant. The ending was abrupt and I didn't really learn the kind of fate I had just set in motion for the world.

Item Weights

The bag was poorly balanced to the type of behaviour the game encourages - keeping all crafting materials because you might need them later. By the time I got halfway through chapter 2 I had about 220/300 of my bag permanently occupied by stuff I intended to keep, leaving me room for only a few pieces of armor found in a cavern or the like until I had to go back to town to sell. In the end I went with a weightless mod and found the game far more enjoyable after that. I'm usually against playing a game as anything but as intended, but this oversight alone caused me great displeasure while I left it unchecked. There are many ways this can be addressed.

Loading Times

I don't know how you guys did it, but I was shocked at how fast you made the loading compared to the first game, and anything else I've played for that matter. Its better than any other PC game I've played to date (excluding old games on new hardware).

Now reading this you might think I didn't like Witcher 2, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! When you play a game for 30 hours or so though, you kind of notice things.

I love TW 2...it is my favorite game of all time. Having said that:

QTEs
At first they seemed like a good idea, but they lead to too much button mashing. I much preferred the timing based combat in TW 1. After a while, the QTEs become too easy, and actually take away from the visuals of the game. Instead of watching what's going on, I'm concentrating on looking for button flashes.

The comments on QTEs apply to battle only. I thought they were a nice touch with arm wrestling and boxing.

SEX (NOT ENOUGH)
In the Witcher 1, Geralt was a hound, as he should be. In the Witcher 2, eeh, he is not. It seems too out of character for him. FYI, I loved the way CDP handled the sex cut scenes. Very tastefully done.

DIFFICULTY
The game gets easier when it should get harder. It's harder when it should be easier (prologue, Kayran). The Kayran will keep MANY players from finishing the game, and several players I know have gotten bored when the game becomes a cake walk later on. The difficulty curve seems reversed on every level, and this will ultimately hurt repeated play value.


Other than that, I can't think of anything else I would change. This game is a masterpiece, but even the Mona Lisa could have been improved upon.

I know that as I've read some of the stories. I'm not talking about those, which are wonderful, but about the game. TW 1 set expectations in this area (the number of conquests and being in control regarding when you could have those experiences outside of the prostitues) that TW 2 did not match or exceed. That was my point, along with finding it disappointing.

I'm inclined to agree about the oddness of the learning curve. Weight limits didn't bother me too much, but I didn't do very much crafting at all on my Roche run (never got around to crafting any main armor, for instance -- kept the Blue Stripes jacket until Seltkirk, went to Zireal, then to Vicovaro , and crafted only three swords as well -- a jagged sword, a robust blue meteorite sword, and Caerme. Did have crafted the Elder Blood trousers, gauntlets and boots, though).


My major irritations were

- the occasional loss of control when throwing bombs, which is definitely a bug;

- the seeming inability to either mark the map manually, or have certain extremely important locations marked when found (like the entrance to the Vergen mines; I must have wiped out practically *all* the local monsters during my lengthy wanderings between Henselt's camp and Vergen) -- design issue. Likewise, marking areas as explored would be *extremely * useful for search-and-destroy / search-and-recover missions, and seems entirely consistent with what a real-world character would actually be doing. The map could be *far* more useful than it is.

- the general lack of "where can I find <business type>" chatter, notably craftsmen and to a lesser degree booksellers. There existence shouldn't be a state secret everybody is terrified to talk about, and "I'm new in town, where could I find a smith|alchemist|bookseller" seems not unreasonable.


Minor issues include

- the "four runes in a room, deactivate them in the right order" puzzles. If you're patient, you can actually ignore the clues and simply systematically work through the permutations; there are only 24 possible orderings of four runes, there is no time pressure at all, and the only penalty of failure appears to be taking a minor bit of fire damage (which, by Act 3, you probably have considerable resistance to). You can simply iterate; this is not particularly interesting but isn't /that/ long; is basically risk-free; and still nets you the interesting diagrams. I gather that you -can- get clues elsewhere, but you really don't need them if you'll tolerate a little tedium.

- the dice player quests are fairly silly (why a ranking order?); in particular, in Act 3 some of the dice players are rather close to monsters IIRC

- it is slightly odd that you can sell anything (well, anything sellable, i.e. non-quest-items) to any merchant in the game. Not that you get very much money for it at all... but what is a random fishmonger going to do with surplus Endrega jaws? Is it even legal for a barkeep to own a sword that sets people on fire and armor better than that of your average lordling? I wouldn't mind e.g. seeing a noble pay more for trophies to decorate his manor, or an alchemist be much more willing to buy (and to pay more for) random creature organs, or a smithy to pay more for weapons and armor, while these would completely reject objects of less interest to them.

- the ease and general necessity of looting random people's homes, heh; arguably, this should at least lower your reputation, even if everybody's too scared to actually directly complain to you about it. This would be mitigated considerably if sold loot or contracts were more valuable -- hell, you can probably earn money by arm-wrestling almost as fast as by finding and selling fantastic treasures or seeking and destroying every singe Nekker tunnel entrance. This seems incongruous.

I agree with pretty much your whole post, but would like to especially point out these two items: I like this idea with one caveat: I don't think it's especially fun if you have to go to a specific merchant just to sell some goods. This ends up making the player do a lot of running around and time wasting for no real reason. What I'd like to see instead is that all merchants would buy everything, but only give good prices on items they'd logically want. Other stuff they'd accept but at much lower prices. This at least gives the player the option of still selling off all his junk, or if he decides he wants to maximize profits, he could spend the time running around to do so. Yes, it's strange that no one even bats an eyelash when you loot their homes. I wouldn't mind something like a game mechanic where they call the guard if you're caught stealing. You'd have the option of bribing your way out of trouble, or fighting. If you fight, there should be some consequences as well.

And yeah, it's really strange that you can basically arm wrestle or dice for the same amount of coin that a decent piece of gear would fetch you - and it's a lot faster and far less dangerous than finding that gear.